


you are my darling daughter (and i love you)

by tambuli



Series: by what right (does the dragon judge the griffon) [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 22:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12220389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambuli/pseuds/tambuli
Summary: Her name will ring throughout Thedas for Ages and Ages after: etched in the Shaper’s Memories, sung in both Dalish history and smoky taverns, written down in every general history book and scroll worth its name.But before everything else, before griffons and blue-striped armor, before political intrigue and heartbreak—before they called her savior, hero, as if that were her name—She was namedPupDarlingSisterAuntie—Ailis. Just Ailis.//Snippets of Cousland family life before the Fifth Blight came calling.





	you are my darling daughter (and i love you)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [such as iron & dragonbone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025698) by [torch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torch/pseuds/torch). 



> Title taken from Bryce Cousland's dialog in the origin. Everything in this oneshot collection will be happy Cousland family fluff--which just makes everything worse.

The day after Highever’s summer tournament, Ailis Cousland woke to her six-year-old nephew jumping on her bed and shouting, “Auntie! Auntie, wake up!”

“ _Oren_ ,” Ailis sighed, eyes squeezed shut, still trying to chase the last remnants of her dream. “Hush, my love, it is not yet time to wake.”

“But Aunt Ailis, you said you would teach me swordplay!” The nephew in question bounced again, jolting the bed. Calenhad, Ailis’s brown mabari war hound, whined in protest.

Ailis blindly reached out to pat her dog. Even with closed eyes, she knew that both she and Calenhad shared the same exasperation— _oh Oren, could you not let us sleep a while longer?_

“Aunt Ailis,” Oren whined. “You gave your word!”

“Very well,” Ailis said, stretching out and feeling the delicious ache of well-used muscles. Calenhad huffed, burrowing further into the covers. “Since I promised.”

Truth be told, there was only herself to blame, she thought, as her nephew’s tousled brown hair and beaming face came into view. Oren was so very excited after the tournament yesterday that his mother Oriana had a terrible time trying to get him to sleep. Of course he would wake at daybreak absolutely brimming with little-boy energy.

Had she been as young as Oren was, she might have been the same way.  Yesterday’s tournament winner had been given a great honor upon his victory: not just a purse full of gold, but an opportunity to join the legendary Grey Wardens. That order of great warriors were the only ones who could slay Archdemons—huge corrupted dragons that led darkspawn and caused Blights to come down upon the land.

When she was six years old, Ailis just as enthralled as Oren was now with songs and stories. So, the moment the victor stepped up to Warden-Commander Duncan to claim his reward, Oren had immediately declared he was going to become a Grey Warden. He was going to join Ser Jory, the knight who had won the tournament, and become the best Grey Warden the world had ever known!

But first, he needed to learn swordplay.

So Oren had begged his father, Ailis’s brother Fergus, for weaponry lessons, but Fergus had laughed and patted his head. “You’re too young, Oren!” he boomed. “Mayhaps when you are a little bigger!”

Father had been similarly unmoved by his grandson’s pleas. “I’m sorry, my grandson, but Fergus and I will be leading the armies of Highever to Ostagar. I will not have time.”

So Oren fled to his beloved Auntie Ailis, and begged her to teach him swordplay. Ailis, who had been wrapped around Oren’s little finger from the moment he opened his blue-green eyes, had rashly said yes.

But surely, that promise did not mean lessons at the crack of dawn!

“Will the great hero Oren Cousland permit his beloved aunt a breakfast first?” she said, tossing her thick green blankets aside. Calenhad whined, but jumped off the bed obligingly. “After all, heroes should not go into battle hungry.”

It turned out that Oren was willing to permit his aunt a breakfast, especially since Mother had told Nan, the cook, to set out Oren and Ailis’s favorite strawberry jam.

Breakfast passed pleasantly enough, with Ailis and Oren passing the strawberry jam back and forth (Ailis's sister-in-law Oriana on hand to wipe up any jam smears on Oren's face), until the little boy declared himself full.

“Aunt Ailis, I’m finished!” he said. “ _Now_ may we go to the training yard?”

“You must learn patience, my love,” Oriana reprimanded. “What if your Aunt Ailis is not finished?”

“Yes, Mama,” Oren subsided.

Oriana shot Ailis a look, and Ailis, who was just about to get up, settled back down. Recently, Oriana had taken up the challenge of teaching a six-year-old boy noble manners, and enlisted everyone in the family to do so. It seemed that the Antivan woman was going to teach her son patience, so to drive the point, Ailis calmly took up another piece of bread and began spreading strawberry jam on it.

After a few moments during which Oren visibly fidgeted, then quieted himself, Oriana nodded to Ailis. Chewing, swallowing, then draining her mug of cocoa, Ailis said, “Very well, I too am finished.”

“Shall we go then, Aunt Ailis?”

“Make your excuses, Oren,” Oriana said.

Oren’s face screwed up, but he recited, “May I be please be excused from the table?”

“You may.”

“Aunt Ailis, shall we go?”

“Gladly, my love,” Ailis said, and took the hand offered to her. She should have taken his arm, but her nephew was not quite tall enough for that yet. Calenhad rose from where he had dozed off in a patch of sun, and padded after them.

“Well!” Fergus said. “Oren has no idea what he’s getting into, has he? Well, go on, son, have fun. Ailis, try not to bruise him too much.”

“It was never Ser Ashforde who bruised us, brother,” Ailis said, referring to their dear, deceased fighting instructor. “It was our own foolishness.”

Mother laughed. “Then I hope Oren is not quite as foolish as his father or his aunt.”

As it turned out, Oren was a very attentive student, at least for his first lesson. Ailis had him change into practical clothing, and donned her own leathers as well. Father had commissioned her a set of light plate, but wearing it was hardly sensible during a training session. Then she had him sit down and watch as she performed a few drills at half-speed, first with a sword and shield, then with a greatsword.

“Aunt Ailis, you wield two swords, don’t you? Will you teach me?”

Ailis’s brown hair was falling out of its ponytail, so she began retying it as she answered Oren’s question. “I _can_ , darling, but I prefer a greatsword, myself.”

“I want to learn how to use two swords!”

“I do not believe it is a style to which you would be suited.”

“Why not?”

“Firstly, a sword and shield is traditional for the male heir of a noble family,” she said, tying off her hair. “Secondly, while dual-wielding looks very impressive, it leaves one very open to attacks, as one does not have a shield with which to protect oneself.”

She drew daggers from her boots, and stepped into a circle of mannequins—in truth, straw-stuffed sacks, tied to posts. With her daggers in hand—“Oren, mind!”—she swept outwards.

The straw  _flumpf_ ed to the ground, empty half-sacks dangling sadly from the posts.

“Another option for would be—”

 Without missing a beat, she turned and unleashed a flurry on another mannequin, the result of which was a massacred sack, perforated and spilling its innards.

“Wow, Aunt Ailis!” Oren scrambled toward his aunt, kneeling in the straw as if to reassure himself that the takedown he saw was real. “That was amazing!”

“It does look impressive,” she said. “But what did you notice about what I needed to do before I could attack the mannequins?”

Oren’s face—Fergus’s face, Father’s face in miniature—screwed up in thought.

“You needed to be very close to them,” he said slowly.

“Yes, my love. Were the mannequins real, they could have slid their swords into me before I could even get close. Long swords have better reach than daggers.”

“So why don’t you use long swords, instead?”

 _Because when I was a child, I wanted to be better than Fergus,_ Ailis thought but did not say. _And as a child, bigger is better—so I wanted a bigger sword than Fergus’s._

She picked up two wooden long swords from the pile of equipment in the corner. “Heft these, my love. One in each hand.”

He staggered under the weight.

“They are heavy,” she said unnecessarily. “It would require a great deal of strength for one to wield a long sword in each hand. And mind, Oren, those are wooden. Swords of live steel are much, much heavier.”

Oren nodded thoughtfully.

“But Auntie, isn’t your greatsword heavier?”

“I use both hands to wield a single sword, love. My hands work together to make it not seem so heavy.”

“But Aunt Ailis, did you know when you were my age that you were going to wield a greatsword?”

An involuntary laugh escaped her as she remembered six-year-old Ailis, all pigtails and indignant fury, demanding why thirteen-year-old Fergus could train with the Cousland sword and shield and she could not.

“No, darling. I very much wanted to be a shield maiden, but my instructor Ser Ashforde said I would never grow strong enough for it. I was furious, so I decided I was going to prove her wrong and chose the heaviest weapon I could.”

Oren frowned.

“But we don’t yet know how I am going to grow up, right?”

Probably as broad and strong as Fergus and Father, Ailis thought. But she could see where Oren’s thought was going, and she did not want to dash his hopes.

“No, darling, we don’t.”

“Then I’ll do it, Auntie! I’ll be fast enough and strong enough to wield two long swords! And then the world will know of Oren Cousland, the greatest Grey Warden ever known, and the hero of Highever! No, of Ferelden!”

Ailis laughed, and drew her beloved nephew into a hug, uncaring of how sweaty they both were.

“The world will know of you, my darling,” she said. “I am absolutely certain of it.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> \+ i replayed the noble origin to get some of the details clarified and wow, the heartbreak. "Mama said you're going to protect us, Auntie!" Oh, Oren, I wish I had. Maker, I wish I had.


End file.
